


the ringing of a bell (forlorn and empty)

by verdantElf



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Candlenights Exchange 2018, Gen, No Dialogue, Unbeta'd, What if Magnus got pulled into the Astral Plane?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 07:42:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17158016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verdantElf/pseuds/verdantElf
Summary: Magnus gets pulled into the Astral Plane.





	the ringing of a bell (forlorn and empty)

**Author's Note:**

> For tumblr user blueandnoah, who wanted some good good Tres Horny Boy angst. Hope you like!

Magnus gets sucked into the Astral Plane.

It doesn’t matter how desperately Taako reaches for him, wide-eyed, stretching his arms as far as they’ll go. It’s not enough. Magnus gets pulled into the tar that took Kravitz, kicking and screaming, and there’s nothing Taako can do.

He can still feel the phantom brush of fingertips where they almost managed to grab one another.

As he’s pulled back by Merle’s surprisingly competent spell, he watches the rift close, and he feels numb. It doesn’t feel real. He starts to feel the start of an emotion, but is jarred back to reality with the lich’s voice, the one now puppeting Magnus’s corpse.

They still have to get out alive. His-- grieving? is that what this is? why does it feel like he’s lost someone before? --can wait. Will have to wait.

He raises the umbrastaff.

\---

Magnus is sucked into the Astral Plane.  
He sees the rift close, Taako looking more frenzied than Magnus has every seen him. And then he looks around, and sees the tar consuming everything, writhing with opulent streaks of color, reaching for the island in the distance, and as he looks down, now for him.

And Magnus _remembers_.

He freezes up, and he knows that’s not good, that the Hunger will consume him, too, if he doesn’t get the hell out of dodge, but he can’t seem to make himself move. The memories are hitting so quickly, and are only getting more intense as they go, oh, gods, Lucretia, what have you done?

Magnus loses himself in the slew of a century of stolen memories bombards his brain, and though he can feel the Hunger grab him-- how did it find them?? the relics, oh, Lucretia, _why_ \--but he can’t move. He’s pulled in, and everything is darkness and unhappiness and starbursts of violent color, the emotion of discontent ringing through him, and Magnus tries to hold onto himself the best he can. He will not assimilate if he can help it; It will have to destroy him first.

It seems like years but also no time at all when he feels a limb grasp his arm; he can’t see anything through the oily tar of the Hunger, but that’s definitely a hand. A strong one, and Magnus feels the stranger drag them through the screaming mass with difficulty, but still amazingly, considering what’s they’re swimming in.

They breach the surface and the stranger tosses him onto a pebbly shore, whipping around to cut tendrils of Hunger away, and Magnus barely has time to process that it’s Kravitz before the Reaper is pushing both of them into the stockade and barring the door.

Kravitz drops to his knees, obviously trying to contact his goddess, but nothing happens. They look at each other, Kravitz with desperate confusion, and Magnus with shellshocked horror. They’re trapped, and alone.

\---

They get the fucking bell. It wasn’t worth it, Taako thinks, this stupid knickknack for Magnus’s life. The liches could have kept it, for all he cared, if they just had Magnus back.

He steadily ignores the realization that he had gone and gotten attached, had made a good friend, that he was trusting again. It was too much, far too much right now, when he is so numb with grief and pain.

They step out of the cannonball. Taako hold the bell, and vaguely hears Merle stutter out what happened to Magnus. He doesn’t pay attention. He doesn’t have the energy.

He does hear Carey’s piercing, heartbeaking wail, sees her drop to her knees, Killian going to comfort her what little she can.

Taako want that, he thinks. Too bad Krav was in the tar, too.

And with that thought, it’s officially to much. Taako sinks down, dazed and exhausted, next to the cannonball. He’s still holding the bell, and when he realizes that, he throws it as far away from himself as he can. He hears it go skittering off. He doesn’t care.

Magnus is dead.


End file.
